1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a scooter type motorcycle equipped with a fuel cell system, and more particularly, to scooter type motorcycle equipped with a fuel cell system and having a fuel tank supporting structure.
2. Related Art
A vehicle driven by a power of a fuel cell has been developed, which includes a fuel tank that stores a fuel, for example, hydrogen gas, a fuel cell stack (hereinafter, simply called a fuel cell) that generates electric power by chemical reaction of the fuel and air, i.e., oxygen in the air, a secondary cell, and a motor that drives a drive wheel.
In general, many conventional fuel cell systems for four-wheel vehicles generate relatively large electric power of several tens kW, and generate equivalent amounts of heat with power generation. Thus, the conventional fuel cell systems for four-wheel vehicles include water cooling type cooling units with high cooling efficiency. Further, in order to generate a large electric power, the conventional fuel cell system includes a compressor which feeds a large amount of air to the fuel cell system.
A scooter type motorcycle driven by an electric power of the fuel cell (which may be called hereinafter merely “scooter type fuel cell driven motorcycle”, “fuel cell driven motorcycle”, or merely “fuel cell motorcycle”) as one example of the conventional fuel cell driven vehicle includes a water cooling fuel cell system capable of generating relatively large electric power. Such a scooter type fuel cell driven motorcycle includes: a radiator for cooling the fuel cell, which is disposed near to a front side of a vehicle main body; a cooling system which is disposed behind the radiator; a fuel cell disposed rearward of the cooling system and before a front end of a seat; and a fuel tank which is behind the fuel cell and substantially occupies a space under the seat. The cooling system thermally connects the radiator, the fuel cell and various electric components (for example, see Patent Document 1 (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-99008)).
Meanwhile, an air cooling type fuel cell system generates relatively small electric power of several kW, but does not require a radiator, a cooling water pump, a reservoir tank, and piping which are included in the cooling system of a water cooling type fuel cell system, and can cool the heat generated with electric power generation with air as the reactant gas.
In addition, an air cooling type fuel cell system has low pressure loss in an air passage, and accordingly, an air cooling type fuel cell system has a simple system configuration in which a blower fan may suffice in place of a compressor, as an auxiliary machine to suppress the power consumption of the auxiliary machine to be low. Therefore, air cooling type fuel cell systems are utilized for the fuel cell driven vehicles such as fuel cell motorcycles capable of traveling with low output power as compared with four-wheel vehicles, and compact motor vehicles such as motor chairs.
Further, a fuel cell driven vehicle uses hydrogen gas as the fuel, and therefore, it is necessary to reliably protect a fuel tank from accidents such as overturning and collision for the sake of safeness.
However, in the conventional vehicle driven by the fuel cell, since a fuel tank is disposed in the space under the seat, it is difficult to say that the fuel tank can be protected in the accidents such as overturning and collision of the vehicle.
In addition, a conventional fuel cell vehicle mainly gives a weight to protection of the fuel tank, and if the fuel cell vehicle can sufficiently secure the storage amount of fuel in the fuel tank, it is difficult to sufficiently extend the cruising distance.